Happy Thursday! Chocolate Chip Cookies 2 Ways

Happy Thursday!  Sometimes you just need a little help to get you through Thursday and on to the weekend.  I hope these cookies help.  Well yesterday was my 25th birthday, and I am only starting to feel old sometimes, like at work where we now have about 5 employees straight out of college and two years ago I was the youngest in the company.  Or those times where I really have to be an adult and make big girl decisions...

Any who, no one really wants to talk about getting older.  Instead lets talk about cookies.  A friend asked me the other week what my favorite thing to bake is.  My response was chocolate chips cookies, which is what inspired me to make these.  There is nothing like the smell of chocolate chips cookies baking in the oven, the anticipation of pulling them out of the oven, having to wait just a minute for them to cool before you can pull one apart and enjoy it with a glass of milk.  NOTHING beats a warm scratch made chocolate chip cookie.  And of course since I made these particular cookies two ways, I had to pour myself an extra large glass of milk so I could try both before taking them in to work.  I mean I had to make sure they were delicious... In cookie version 1, the coconut and oatmeal gave the cookies great texture and were still soft and delicious with just a hint of coconut.  The heath bar in cookie version 2 melted and these cookies came out chewy and soft just the way I like them.

Health bar chopped and ready to be added to dough.

Butter and sugars in the process of being creamed.

 

All of the dough with just chocolate chips. 

 

Then the dough is split among two bowls.  This one I added the coconut and oatmeal to.

 

Dough with heath bar added.

Double Chocolate Chip Cookies 2 ways - Coconut-Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies & Heath Bar Chocolate Chip Cookies: (recipe adapted from Barefoot Contessa's chocolate chunk cookies recipe)

*makes approximately 20 cookies of each

1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

1 cup light brown sugar

1/2 cup sugar

2 large eggs, at room temperature

2 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1/2-12 oz bag semi sweet chocolate chips (normal sized)

1/2-12 oz bag Ghirardelli semi sweet chocolate chips (larger sized chips)

Cookie 1:

1 cup oatmeal, not quick cooking

3/4 cup unsweetened, flaked coconut.

Cookie 2:

2 heath bar candy bar, chopped

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

2.  In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugars.

3.  Whisk in the eggs and vanilla until well incorporated.

4.  In a separate mixing bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt.

5.  Mix dry ingredients in to the wet ingredients.  Fold in the chocolate chips.

6.  Divide the dough evenly between two mixing bowls.

7.  In one bowl, fold the chopped heath bar into the dough.  Place this dough in the refrigerator.

8.  In the second bowl, fold in the oatmeal and coconut. 

9.  Using a tablespoon or cookie scoop, drop dough onto a cookie sheet about 1 1/2 inches apart.  Bake for 13-15 minutes or until golden brown.

10.  Remove from oven and let cool on a cooling rack. 

11.  When finished with the coconut-oatmeal batch; repeat the process with the heath batch.  These cookies need to be placed further apart as the dough will spread more than the coconut-oatmeal cookies.

12. Enjoy!